


Sixes Hang in the Door

by AwCoffeeNo



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gardens & Gardening, Grief/Mourning, Grown Men Crying, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Negan Saying 'Fuck', Suicide Attempt/Themes, post-issue #174 basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-17 21:07:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15470070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwCoffeeNo/pseuds/AwCoffeeNo
Summary: After Maggie tells him what happened, Rick Grimes decides to pay Negan a house call. He's not sure what he's expecting, but it's not Negan gardening.





	1. A House Call

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "666 ʇ” by Bon Iver  
> basically just a weepy little fix-it, will have chapters soon as I work out all of my unhappy Walking Dead feelings with gardening  
> trying to keep this comfortably in comics-verse, but my comics-verse knowledge is a little spotty, so excuse any inconsistencies!

After Maggie tells him what happened, Rick decides to pay Negan a house call.

It takes him a few weeks, he’s not gonna lie. What with everything. It’s been enough time that whatever was gonna happen to Negan has probably already happened, but he goes anyway.

What exactly he’s expecting, he’s not quite sure. A walker wearing Negan’s face, shuffling out the door? Negan strung up and swinging to-and-fro from a noose with the force of his gnashing teeth, eyes bulging from his head unseeing.

 _Won’t be like that_ , he tells himself. _Guy like Negan would be smart enough to use a gun._ Then he tries not to worry about exactly how many bullets Dwight gave him, and if Negan would have torn through them all by now.

He tries to put that image out of his head as he approaches the little cove of houses, marked by the telltale makeshift cross. It’s just a couple of sticks, tied together, and the sight of it almost wrings another bout of tears out of him like his eyes hadn’t gone dry, days ago. He gets it. Goddamn, he gets it. He can still smell the dirt from Andrea’s grave on his person, clinging to the soles of his shoes and sticking under his nails.

In front of the grave, there’s fresh flowers. He finds Negan very much alive.

The man is _fucking gardening_.

Relief floods him, and he scowls to himself while Negan’s back is still turned to him, bent over the garden with his hands in the dirt, his white shirt half soaked-through with sweat.

In the moments before Negan sees him, Rick feels the world rush up around him, a recursive callback to his dream of a reality which can never be. One where Negan wears Rick’s old plaid shirts and gardens with his still-living daughter. It sparks static-electricity tingles in his fingers, as though he’s so close to that fantastical unreality he could touch it.

If the sound of Negan curing his way through the process of weeding didn’t start floating into the range of his hearing around the same time, it could almost be eerie.

Around the time that Rick catches wind of Negan’s stream of expletives, Negan must catch the sound of Rick’s approaching footsteps. He whirls around, clearly expecting a walker, and then relaxes visibly when he sees Rick.

He looks tired. Maybe a little gaunter. But very much alive.

Later, after Rick has invited himself into the shithole Negan’s taken to living in, they sit awkwardly across from each other, legs crossed. “I’d offer you a place to sit, but, well…” Negan said when they came inside, gesturing wide at the dirty wooden floor. Not a chair in sight.

Rick doesn’t know why he thought it would be different.

Negan festers with the kind of bitterness which only comes with weeks of solitude. He’s throwing old barbs at Rick about _building trust_ , and bitching about being left alone in the woods, and Rick is baring his teeth right back at Negan so Negan knows in a language he _fucking understands_ that trust is never happening, and that he’s here in the woods to stay. At this point, it’s as much habit as anything else.

“I just thought….” Negan says, finally, once they’ve both exhausted each other, “shit man, I brought you Alpha’s head in a fucking bag. I thought I could make myself useful. I thought I could… _prove myself_ to you.”

They go silent, after that. It stretches long and empty between them. Negan stares at the dirt under his fingernails. Rick stares at the space between their feet.

Rick Grimes would not have made it as long as he has in this world if he didn’t know sincerity when he heard it, and it’s all but dripping off of Negan ’s voice. He wants to believe that this is some kind of ploy for sympathy, just another round of Negan’s manipulation, but it’s not. He’d always been able to see through that. He’d always known better.

He wonders why he came here today.

Negan looks at him again when he fails to respond. Putting some of his old intonation into his voice, he says, “Well. Guess I really am just a dumb fuck. You guys were right _all_ along!”

Even as he says it, Rick can hear some undercurrent to his voice, some uncharacteristic hoarseness that speaks to a deeper feeling than the one he’s voicing. 

He isn’t able to look Negan in the eye. He wants to say something, but he doesn’t have anything nice to say.

He leaves shortly after that, leaving Negan behind in the little house.

In the front, now cast half in darkness with the fading of the light, there’s a garden full of sunflowers, tomatoes, and cucumbers broken out in little yellow flowers. Rick is sure it was there before Negan, some of it, but it’s carefully tended, watered and weeded and lush.

Inside the house, there’s little but canned goods and darkness. Negan hasn’t even bothered to clear the place past the hallway.

A few walkers shuffle along at the forest edge, separated from the enclave of houses by maybe a hundred feet. Too far away to smell him, or to hear the sound of his jagged gait as he walks back to his car.

Rick goes home. That night, he leaves Andrea’s grave to lie between freshly-washed sheets and listens to the soft whiz of the air conditioning, wide awake. He wonders, not for the first time, if he knows shit about justice.

 

\--

Once Rick leaves, Negan cries, long and bitter.

The shit is fucking depressing. Nothing dignified about it. Bent double in his makeshift bed, elbows pressed up to his knees, he blubbers into his hands like an absolute fucking pussy until the tears leak through the cracks between his fingers.

If Rick can’t even look at him after he says, _I thought I could prove myself to you_ , he doesn’t even wanna think about how Rick would look at him if he said what he really meant. If he said _I’m in love you_.

 _I’m in love with you and that’s why I’m so fucking fucked up about this_.

He does think about it, though. Can’t help himself. The thought keeps him up through the night, thinking through every shamefully soft fantasy in which he does prove himself to Rick. In which Rick feels the same feelings aching in his chest which Negan feels in his. Where he, like Negan, has felt it growing there for years.

He takes them all and discards them, painfully, one by one.

When the sun comes up, he’s still awake. There’s nothing left but the vague, muffled feeling that he wants to light something on fire. Too bad he doesn’t even have shit to burn. He already burned the damn bat. 

\--

Everything in Alexandria hurts, and nothing is helping.

Carl’s gone back to the Hilltop. His house is empty.

They try to fill the gap, his friends, as best they can. Michonne sits with him beside at Andrea’s grave more nights than he can count, sharing a thermos of coffee between them as the hours pass. Maggie’s still smarting about Negan, he can tell, but she brings him dinner more nights than not.

There’s nothing to be done about his empty house, though. He can’t sleep in it at night. He can’t be in it by day.

Rick can’t stop thinking about Negan, either. It feels like he’s being haunted by the other man so tangibly that after a few days he knows he won’t be able to help checking on Negan himself, make sure he’s still alive. Make sure he’s eating.

He keeps thinking about what Maggie told him Negan said. How he begged her in tears her to end it all, told her he didn’t want to be alive. Even Maggie, who is surely the last person in this world to sympathize with Negan, told him that it was utterly sincere.

He doesn’t like it one bit, but the truth is that the years have worn away at his hatred of Negan. Negan himself has worn away at that hatred. With the loneliness of his own grief weighing on him, this new development is… a little close to home.

When he does sleep, which is rarely, he dreams Andrea is with him, lying beside him in the bed, but the only words she’ll say are _mercy, mercy_.

\--

The next time Rick turns up, a few days later, he’s got two loaves of fresh-baked bread, wrapped up together in a cloth, and another one of his fucking pinched-ass, inscrutable expressions on his face.

“I know it ain’t much,” he says to Negan by way of hello, “but I’m betting you’d appreciate just about anything that didn’t come out of a can.”

Negan does. He goddamn appreciates that shit so fucking much it turns his insides to jelly in an instant.

It ain’t just the smell of fresh bread, either. There’s such a disgusting mixed-up rush of relief and guilt that goes through Negan the instant that he sees Rick’s limping form approaching. It’s so intense that as soon as he’s got the other man in the door, he finds himself sitting a bemused Rick down and making him a fucking sandwich.

He’s honestly not sure why Rick allows it. Maybe he’s just happy to see that Negan’s finally cleaned out the house a little bit.

In the absence of anything better to burn, he’d cleared the downstairs, and hauled the bodies of the twice-dead residents of the house out back and burnt them.

It left a smell like rotting barbecue everywhere for days, but as soon as that first preliminary step was taken, there wasn’t any stopping. With nowhere else to channel his restless energy, he swept off the floors like a fucking housewife. He cleared out the kitchen and wiped the rot out of the fridge. He dusted everything in sight.

It still looks like some fucking Fallout shit, for the most part, but least Rick is sitting at the damn table instead of the floor this time around. It’s something. And Negan? He’s standing at the counter cutting up vegetables all while running his mouth because he just can’t fucking turn it off. “I’m gonna make you the best fucking post-apocalyptic sandwich you ever tasted, yessir I am, fresh from Mama Negan’s post-apocalyptic kitchen,” he’s rattling along, and God, is Rick even listening to him? Is that man even hearing the string of bullshit that’s currently coming out of his mouth?

Obviously not. A look over Negan’s shoulder finds Rick staring unseeing at the empty space in the center of the scratched-up dining room table. Negan was gonna bring in flowers from the garden, but he found out the hard way he can’t even look at those useless-ass sunflowers he’s been putting on Lucille’s grave without the waterworks starting up again.

Negan puts Rick’s sandwich in front of him with a clatter, and Rick says, “Maggie told me what happened, Negan.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. This isn’t a goodwill gesture. It’s a fucking trap.

Predictably, he gets nasty.

“So what is this, exactly, Rick?,” he snarls, leaning over the other man like he isn’t the one who’s shaking. “You here for all my sharp objects? Got a bottle of happy pills shoved up your ass? Or, wait, even better, you wanna braid my hair and suck my dick and tell me it’s all gonna be _fucking okay?_ Because, breaking fucking news, asshole, you’re a few years late for that shit.”

Also predictably, this does nothing but make Rick look at him with something _way_ too close to pity for Negan’s comfort. “That’s not why I’m here, Negan.”

Negan tries again: “I mean it, Rick. Save that bull-fucking-shit for the suburbs. Save it for Andrea and those cute little kids of yours -- if they’re all dumb enough to still believe it, comin’ out of your mouth!” 

He gets a split second of enjoying the flash of hurt in Rick’s eyes -- _got ‘im!_ \-- before his mouth snaps shut, and the miserable knaw of guilt sets back in as he sees how palpably Rick flinches, how instantaneously his face goes into a trained blank stare.

_See, Negan? This is exactly the kinda reason that he ain’t ever gonna trust you. See if he ever comes back now, you piece of shit._

Rick leaves.

Negan throws out the two sandwiches uneaten.

He never does hear why Rick was there that day.

Not that it takes him long to figure it out.

\--

There ain’t no other way to put this: Negan’s big fucking mouth put him on post-apocalyptic suicide watch, and Rick Grimes is back to playing the put-upon small-town cop with a vengeance.

Shit’s stupid.

He still can’t believe Rick comes back, but come back he does.

Every three days or so, he shows up, just around the time the sun’s starting to break through the tops of the trees, and the heat of the day sets in, with some kind of excuse to be there. Same way he was when Negan was down in that cell, except he can never quite hide his relief when Negan appears to great him, tail between his legs, and still kickin’.

He wants to grab Rick by the shoulders and shake him and scream at him that _of-fucking-course_ he isn’t dead, _of-fucking-course_ he hasn’t offed himself because if he was capable of that shit, he wouldn’t have been begging Maggie to do it, now would he?

Ain’t like he hasn’t tried. Of course he’s fucking tried. Negan’s always been a try-anything-once kinda guy. Or, in this particular case, try about a half dozen times, each more successively pathetic and half-assed.

He wants to tell this all to Rick, in hopes of finally driving him off for good, but for once in his sorry life, he holds his tongue because deep down, deep fucking down in his guts, he’s glad not to be alone all the time.

Rick’s shit company. His excuses are shit. He’s moody every goddamn day.

He’s really good in the garden.

They dig more garden beds, in the field by the edge of the housing development. Rick brings seeds from Alexandria with him, one day, for late-summer planting. Pumpkins and squash and onions, nasturtiums and marigolds. Seed is more precious than gold, now, surely.

That day, Negan has to leave Rick alone in the garden to go stand in the kitchen with his hands braced on the counter, taking deep breaths until he’s sure he’s not going to burst into tears with gratitude.

They don’t say much to each other.

\--

One day, about two weeks into this arrangement, Negan snaps.

He’s been digging up onions with Rick in the garden, and generally being a dick about it. Too fast, too hard, not gentle enough, mauling up the earth as he digs up the fleshy roots.

Karma comes for him in the form of his own surprisingly sharp trowel, slamming full-speed into his knuckles.

An instant rush of blood and pain. He drops the trowel like it’s molten hot, and hears himself howling curses incoherently before he’s fully aware of what’s coming out of his mouth -- “goddamn mother of fucking-shit! Jesus Christ! Fuck you, fucking onions!”

Next thing he knows, Rick is taking his hands, turning them over in his own. His blood is getting all over Rick. “Come on,” he says, “come inside before something hears you.”

“Why are you _here_ , Rick?” Negan spits at him in pain as they stumble to their feet. “Why the everloving fuck are you here?”

Rick doesn’t answer. He takes Negan wordlessly into the kitchen and rinses out Negan’s cut-up knuckles with bottled water. He listens to Rick’s non-answer as his fingers probe the cut, and doesn’t have the heart to protest.

“You’re lucky you don’t need stitches,” Rick says gruffly. “Sit down. ”

His hand is throbbing. He obeys thoughtlessly.

A few minutes later, they’re sitting at the kitchen table, and Rick is carefully binding Negan back together with gauze. Negan realizes he hasn’t touched another living, breathing human being in weeks when his mouth goes dry as the Sahara desert, Rick’s entirely clinical motions feeling breathtakingly intimate. 

“Why’re you here?” Negan says again, barely above a whisper.

Rick sits back, not even looking his handiwork. Scrubs his face with his hands. Up, then down. “Could use the company,” he says finally, way grimmer than the phrase requires.

Negan chuckles bitterly. “You could use the company? Fuck you, Rick. A fly bit me on the neck last week, and I swear to you, I got a little hard. You ain’t fuckin’ lonely.”

“No, Negan. I mean, _I get it_.” Rick casts his gaze outside.

Outside the kitchen window: Lucille’s grave.

Suddenly, Negan’s so angry he can hardly see straight.

His hands curl into fists reflexively, but he barely feels the pain that accompanies the rush of fresh blood from his knuckles. “No you don’t. Don’t fucking tell me you get it! You’ve got a kid -- hell, you might as well be married to that pretty blonde chick. You don’t get to sit around playing house all day, then come here and hold my hand and think that’s gonna make this shit all better. _Fuck_ you.”

There’s a minute after that where neither of them says anything. Negan leans over the table, head hanging low, busy gritting his teeth and trying not to give into the urge to smash the closest thing he can get his hands on.

Then, from Rick: an exceedingly shaky breath. Shit that only ever means one thing.

_Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck._

Negan looks up at Rick.

“Carl’s at the Hilltop,” Rick says. “Andrea…. Andrea got bit, Negan, Andrea’s… .”

Rick doesn’t look at Negan when he says it. Can’t even say the word. He looks straight up at the ceiling like Negan hasn’t already seen the tears in his eyes and heard the thickness in his voice. “When I first came here? With the bread? I was gonna tell you then. I was gonna tell you, I get it.”

Negan’s anger evaporates in an instant, and leaves him feeling like the biggest fucking asshole God ever did make. “Fuck. Fuck, man, I’m sorry. I am so fucking sorry.”

Rick’s hands are still on the table, right next to his, and Negan lays his own hands over them without even thinking about it.

A goddamn miracle: Rick doesn’t move away.

Their fingers curl together, and Negan doesn’t care his wounds are splitting open again, blood running through Rick’s bandaging and onto their hands.


	2. Supply Run Gone South

He guesses it was only a matter of time before everything went tits-up. Lack of the buddy system, and all that. It’s been a long time since Negan was out on his own, and maybe, loathe though he is to admit it to anyone, he’s gotten a little rusty. 

Still, that doesn’t make it feel any better when it happens. 

The day starts out _glorious_. When Negan sets out with his shotgun slung over his shoulder down the partially-overgrown road, it can’t be anything more than sixty-five degrees out. Ground fog gathers in the low points of the landscape: in the ditches by the side of the road and under the thick foliage and sprouting trees of what must have once been farm fields. This was farm country, years ago, faded now into what is almost wilderness again.

The gun is just a precaution. The area is all-but-empty, the few walkers around slow and stumble like drinkers already ten beers deep. 

Rick’s coming today, later this afternoon. It’s enough to put Negan in such a good mood that he doesn’t even notice the bad juju in the air, swamped as he is in dumb, happy thoughts. 

The cove of houses he’s living in is maybe a ten-minute walk outside of a little, run-down town. Probably looked fairly post-apocalyptic even before the apocalypse, and now, it’s downright dismal. Behind a flipped semi (which he’s already scoured high and low) there’s a post office, a tiny Baptist church, a run-down shopping center, and self-storage units which sprawls across the right side of the road for some distance. Past a few empty houses with long-shattered windows, there’s a sun-faded playground, and an elementary school. 

His task, for the past few days, has been breaking into and rifling through various units in the self-storage. It’s mostly all junk -- furniture, books, clothes people’s forgotten bullshit from a now long-gone world. 

The unit he busts into today is packed full, mostly garbage. Still, by mid-afternoon, he’s found a shoebox full of spices amid all the actual garbage, and some books mildly worth reading. Some wool socks, and a pair of steel-toed boots that are only kind-of falling apart. 

Storm clouds are brewing on the horizon, but he thinks, _fuck it, one more place_. There’s a mobile home up ahead, real ranch-y looking, with a shed out back. He’s hoping to find some seeds or some fertilizer for the garden. 

Big mistake. The storm breaks while he’s rooting through the backyard shed. 

The rain and thunder come in waves. 

The walkers do, too. 

\-- 

When Rick rolls up to the cove of houses, Negan’s not in the garden. 

He almost didn’t come. The storm which was brewing on the horizon looked downright _biblical_ before he left, and on the drive over, it started to rain so hard that he almost turned the truck right around and went back. Couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him. 

He gets soaked on the short walk from the road to the front door, cursing his own misplaced desire to check on Negan. Negan’s a grown-ass man. Negan can spend a few days on his own, surely. 

There’s a note, lying by the door. _Went on a supply run_ , it says. _Next town down the road, if you beat me here. Come and rifle through people’s old shit with me._

Rick smiles, imagining Negan soaked through and pissed, holded up somewhere down the road, and decides to take mercy on the other man and come pick him up. 

\-- 

He hears them before he sees them. 

No amount of time can ever get Rick used to the collective noise a herd of walkers makes. He knows their moaning and gnashing of teeth will be the stuff which he hears for the rest of his life, in the moments before waking from nightmares. 

It hits him as he’s approaching the town, and he slams on the breaks, coming to a dangerously fast, skidding stop, wheels spinning and squeaking against the wet road as the truck comes to a rest. 

At the edge of town, there’s a semi, flipped over and lying on one side, which is cutting off road access. And, visible from either side of it, there’s walkers, a veritable sea of them, shambling out of the wooded edge of town and pouring across the road. 

Visibility is low. The rain hasn’t let up even a little. Still, Rick can see there’s way, way too many of them. 

It never left him, not really: the frantic feeling of panic, the rush of adrenaline which leaves every muscle in his body strung taut. The struggle to push past the paralysis of fear and into action. 

He thought, once, he’d get used to it, that he’d get used to this whole damn world. That the successive years would dull the edge of it. They didn’t. 

Negan’s out there. Negan’s alone. 

Rick doesn’t think. Doesn’t have to think, not after all these years. 

He’s throwing the car into reverse before he’s formulated a single conscious thought. He’s slamming his hand down on the horn. It screams through the noise of the heard, screams through the buzzing in his own ears. His car is screeching to life as hundreds of rotting heads rotate to locate the sound. 

He has to draw them off. He has to get them away. 

The dead rush at him from either side, pouring forth from either side of the truck. He slams on the gas and skids backward. 

There’s a cross street, maybe a quarter of a mile back. He just has to draw them -- most of them -- that far back, and he can turn off and get away from the heard. A few might follow him, but a few he can handle. 

The rain’s still going. The road’s half-flooded. Water splashes up on either side of him. 

Something crunches under his wheels, and his truck jots. Blood splatters across the back window. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t slow down. If he slows down even a little, hundreds of dead hands will hold him in place. 

_Come on, come on._

He can see the crossroad. He speeds up. Throws the car back into forward gear, and skids into the turn. For a second, he thinks his traction’s not gonna hold, and he’s going to wind up spun out in a ditch covered in walkers. 

But it does. It always does. 

Rick peels off. The herd stumbles down the road, without a care in the damn world. 

For an instant, as he’s turning the car, he sees a flash of black leather, a bit of red. A large man’s body, shambling along with the herd. 

His heart stops in his chest. 

He’s lucky: he’s far enough out now that he can stop the car. Only a pair of walkers followed him, shambling along at a distance after the dull thrumb of the engine. He fumbles in the glove compartment for his binoculars, the rush of dread he feels too familiar for comfort. _He was all alone out here. He was one of mine, and he was out here all alone_ , he thinks in a rush of unexpected horror. 

_God damn it all, he was one of_ mine. 

He gets the walker in his scope. His hands are shaking. 

For a second, before the walker turns, he’s absolutely _sure_ it’s Negan, shambling along with the unmistakable gait of a walker. He’s sure enough that a taste like vomit rises in his throat, and it feels like someone has a hand at his neck and is squeezing. 

Then the walker turns. It’s not Negan. Dark skin, gray hair. Just some unlucky soul with the same jacket and a red shirt. 

Rick has to find Negan. _Now_. 

He drives. 

\-- 

Negan isn’t sure the shed door is gonna hold, for a few fraught minutes. 

As though they had followed the rumbling of the thunder from the west, the horde came on fast Negan barely had time to bolt the door of the shed, cursing himself and his own bad luck. Cursing the cheap, do-it-yourself backyard shed, and the flimsy door which threatens to cave in under the weight of the undead bodies shoving against it, even with Negan’s own back pressed against it to hold it closed, his boots skidding on the flooded, muddy ground with the force of it. 

He would swear up and down that he didn’t make a single noise to draw them here, yet here they are, ramming with incredible force against the shed door. His feet won’t stop skidding. His legs ache with the force required to hold the door in place. His ears ache with the sound of wood, splintering, and hungry jaws clicking. 

He wonders when the last time any walker around here got a decent meal was. 

The whole building’s creaking, and he can hear the wood starting to give in all the right places. His legs are shaking under him. There’s no end to the walkers. No help coming. _Shit, shit. Shit!_

Dumb thing to do, dying for a few seeds. 

For a man who was doing his damndest to die maybe two weeks ago, he finds he’s fucking _terrified_ to die like this. Pants-pissingly, trying-to-remember-the-Hail-Mary terrified. 

He wanted to harvest those tomatoes from his garden. He wanted to see summer turn into fall. God, he wanted to go, but not like this. He wanted to see Rick, again, _god damn it_ , and now he’s gonna die and take all those sappy feelings right with him to the guts of a walker. 

It’s all so stupid he could cry. 

\-- 

There’s only a few buildings. Only a few places where Negan could possibly be. 

Rick wants to get out of the car and scream Negan’s name loud enough that every walker for miles will hear it, just to get his eyes on the man. Unfortunately, the town’s still too oversaturated with walkers to get away with that kind of behavior. 

Instead, he rolls down the street, slow as he dares, looking for any sign of human life. At first, all he sees are the dead. They can hear the spluttering of the truck he’s driving, it’s too damn loud, and every straggler left behind by the herd is coming out from the woodwork, snarling and crawling forward after him. 

Rick keeps the car going just fast enough to stay in front of them, then has to slam on the breaks when he sees exactly what he was looking for: in front of a yellow trailer, there’s a shopping cart. Inside are a few books, a box of something, and some clothes, all soaked and ruined by the rain. 

_Bin-go._

He shoves open the door of the truck, dislodging a walker as he does so. Grabs his weapon. His machete feels so good in his hand, so right, like an extension of his arm, and Rick hasn’t killed walkers like this in ages. One after the other, he slashes through their now gone-soft skulls as he advances away from the truck. He might be impaired, one leg stiff and half-useless, but he could still kill walkers in his sleep. 

_He's one of_ mine, Rick thinks.

But they just keep coming. 

There are six walkers. There is a dozen. They’re on all sides, suddenly. 

He’s shoving one walker back, away from him. He’s slicing right through a throat, right through a brain stem. He’s bringing up the machete and slamming it down into a skull, but the motion throws him off-balance. His feet are slipping on wet asphalt. 

“Shit, shit!” he cries as he lands on one side, hard, all the air knocked out of him. 

For a moment, there’s nothing but the dead, coming at him from all sides, fingers grabbing at him, teeth rasping at the tough fabric of his jean jacket. 

Then, his profanity is answered. 

“Oh, fucking _fuck_ , fucking _Rick_!” Negan yells, coming out of nowhere from the yard behind the trailer, a half-rusted shovel swinging in one hand. 

Rick swats upward with his blade at the walkers bearing down on him, pressing himself up on one arm. Negan is there an instant after, dragging them off him and all-but throwing them back. 

Negan’s swinging wildly at the walkers around them as Rick staggers to his feet. He swings so hard that blood and gray matter are splattering the pavement, putting the whole of his massive body behind each swing, utterly and uncharacteristically silent. Rick doesn’t know when he last saw Negan like this was. If he’s ever seen Negan like this, downright stumbling with the sheer force of each blow he delivers. 

It’s a sight to behold. 

Rick makes it to his feet and presses his back to the truck. He takes down one, two, and then when he looks up again, there’s no more left. Negan’s standing surrounded in downed walkers and drenched in splattered gore, a furiously intense look in his eyes Rick can’t put a name to. 

The instant he drops the shovel, Negan grabs Rick by his shoulders and is manhandling him away as though he thinks he might have to carry Rick from the scene. 

“Let go, Negan, Jesus --” 

“Get _inside_ ,” Negan growls, and there’s nothing Rick can do as Negan all-but drags him up the steps and into the mobile home. 

\-- 

The instant they’re inside the trailer, door deadbolted behind them: “Take off your shirt.” 

“What? No, what?” 

Negan’s heart is pounding so fast he’s getting dizzy. “They were _all over you_. Take off your shirt and let me fucking check you for fucking bites.” He has to force the words out, trying not to let himself gasp and pant for fear. Despite his best efforts, his breath won’t stop rushing in and out, too fast even after the exertion, and stuttering in his throat. 

“I’m not _bit_ ” Rick says, but he’s already undoing the buttons of his shirt anyway, like he can see exactly how close Negan currently is to completely losing his shit. “Look.” 

Negan does. Any sense of decency which might have kept his hands off Rick has evaporated in the wave of panic, and he’s running his hands all over Rick, furiously looking him over while the other man stares at him, bemused. 

“I’m fine, Negan, I swear,” he says, while Negan takes Rick’s hands and turns them over and over in his own, swearing to himself that if he finds so much as a scratch, so much as a single fucking toothmark, he’ll blow his own brains out right beside Rick before Rick goes. 

But Rick’s right. There isn’t shit. There ain’t a single fucking scratch. Man’s as perfect as he was the day he was born. 

He feels like he could collapse on the spot. Rick’s looking at him funny, but he can’t help it. His whole body sags with relief. 

Then he’s just standing there, inches away from Rick. 

His brain just fuckin’ short-circits. 

There’s only a few inches between them. He leans in. He jams his lips against Rick’s. 

He doesn’t know what the hell is going through his mind. He still can’t breathe right, and his teeth smash right into Rick’s, and his hand is shaking on the back of Rick’s neck.

It’s not how he wanted to kiss Rick, not for the first time. He wanted something gentle, but there’s a furious ringing in his ears, and a feeling of incredible lightheadedness. It leaves him removed, by a degree, watching himself as his hand goes to cup Rick’s jaw, trembling. 

Before Negan's lips even leave Rick's, his stomach's bottoming out. 

Rick doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move. For a moment, he doesn’t do _anything_. 

Negan's frozen, for a second. Knows he should pull away, _wants to_ pull away, but he's completely unable to move. Rick, at least, has the mercy not to shove Negan him off. He puts his hands on Negan’s chest, and pushes him back, gentle but firm.

_Fuck._

“Negan, I --” 

“Fuck, Rick,” he chokes. “Don’t say it. I don’t wanna hear it.” 

Rick says it anyway. “Negan. Listen. I can’t. Not like that.” 

“ _Please, don’t_ \--” 

Begging doesn’t stop Rick. He goes on: “I have… god, I have neither the _capacity_ , or the _desire_ for any of that, do you understand?” 

Negan feels like the earth is caving out from under his feet. 

He laughs. It doesn’t sound like laughter. “Forget it, Rick. Don’t mean nothin’. Forget it ever fuckin’ happened.” 

The rain stops as fast as it started. It leaves everything damp and disgusting, all brown with mud and gray with the leftovers of the storm, all funky with the leftover shit luck and mutual near-death. 

There’s nothing left in the town but corpses. They drive back in silence so thick Negan feels like he’s rotting, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry sorry  
> i promise next chapter will feature some actual comfort and not just a world of hurt  
> pinkie promise


	3. (An) Episode

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional/reminder cws for this chapter: continued suicide talk/imagery (although obviously no actual character death), and disassociation/general bad unspecified mental health stuff

A week goes by. 

At first, Negan tries to lie to himself. _He’ll come back_ , he says. _Always does. Dumbass can’t get enough of me, bullshit included_. 

He waters the garden, and then, later, he doesn’t. He goes out to find food, to look for fertilizer and ibuprofen and clean drinking water, and then, later, he doesn’t. 

He can hear footsteps, coming from the upstairs of his little house. More walkers he never dealt with, shut behind doors, which have stirred in the recent days. They don’t even know he’s there, shuffling back and forth and back and forth all night long fruitlessly. He tries to sleep at night, but can’t, even if the never-ending footsteps are starting to sound comforting. 

He picks the tomatoes from his garden, but he can’t bring himself to eat them. It’s getting cold at night, now, his breath turning into warm mist at night. Summer, turning into fall. 

A week goes by, and _he’ll come back_ turns into _you could have gotten him killed_. A week goes by, and frost kills half of his tomato plants. 

One week rolls into another, and he thinks of Rick’s lips under his, unmoving, and he figures he’s blown it for real this time. 

\-- 

It eats Rick up. 

He doesn’t expect it to, has no idea what the feeling even _is_ when it first strikes him. 

Things have been quiet for weeks, his near-disaster with Negan excepted. His leg keeps him from going on the long supply his people make. More by their own insistence than any lack of capacity on his part, he tells himself. 

He’s alone in Alexandria for long hours at a time. _By choice _, he reminds himself. _By choice_. He’s needed in the community more than he’s needed afield, now. __

____

He’s in the armory, this particular morning, cleaning some of their guns, and carefully making sure everything is accounted for. He’s in no rush. There’s nothing to do this morning except this, and working in the garden. 

____

And, well, if he’s being honest, he’s avoiding that particular task. 

____

Just like he’s been avoiding Negan, this whole past week. 

____

As his hands work, he thinks about what happened between them with curiously. There’s no embarrassment to be had on his part, just genuine puzzlement. 

____

He thinks through the pounding of his heart, and the heat radiating off of both of their skin in the relative chill of the late-summer rain, and figures Negan’s actions make sense. Almost dying does that to people. Even if Rick’s never exactly been one to respond to near-death experiences with a bout of horniness, well, it doesn't surprise him that Negan is. 

____

_Wasn’t like it was bad_ , he admits to himself. _Wasn’t like I wasn’t scared, too_. 

____

What is bad? Knowing that now, Andrea isn’t the last person he kissed. Knowing that person is Negan, and the rush of conflicting emotions which follow that realization. It’s too soon, it’s all too soon.

____

There’s… guilt, there, too. Guilt for something, and doesn’t know what for. 

____

Later, the drooping, dehydrated leaves of his cucumbers move him with pity away from the armory and into the garden. While he’s kneeling in the grass, slowly watering each plant at its base, he realizes that the explanation he’s got in his head for what happened doesn’t make a lick of sense. 

____

Negan wasn’t just coming onto him because he was the closest human being with a pulse. Negan wasn’t _coming onto him_ at all, not like that, not like Rick thought. Not like he wanted a quick _thank-God-we’re-not-dead_ fuck shoved up against the trailer door and Rick just happened to be the only plausible target. 

____

No, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Not with the way Negan’s hands were shaking when he kissed him. Not with the way Negan’s laughter afterward sounded nothing like laughter at all. 

____

When he plays it all back in his mind, it’s all so obvious it’s stupid. 

____

He remembers, now, the look on Negan’s face while he was bandaging up the other man’s hand, that day in the garden. It was utterly inscrutable to him at the time. Now, retrospectively, Rick can see the painful longing reflected in Negan’s eyes, clear as day. He remembers the way Negan went quiet as they worked together outside during those first few weeks, sweating in the sun in silence. Negan, who hadn’t been quiet a day in his life before, suddenly unable to string together more than about three words at once? He hadn’t understood it, at the time, had thought what hung in the humid air between them was nothing but the hollow ache of shared grief. 

____

He remembers looking into Negan’s eyes, when the other man laid hands on him as he cried for Andrea. Negan hadn’t looked like he was the one comforting Rick, even though Rick had felt in that moment as though the weight of Negan’s huge hands clasped over his own was the only thing in the world keeping him tethered to reality. 

____

No, Negan had looked… oddly tender, as he’d let Rick cry. He’d let their hands stay clasped together even as his knuckles split open again and he’d bled, unmoving and silent, light hitting his dark eyes and turning them multitudes lighter. 

____

In retrospect, it’s all so obvious. 

____

He wonders when it started. Wonders how many weeks, how many _years_ Negan might have felt this way, then realizes as soon as he poses the question to himself that he doesn’t really want to know. The days stretch back behind them, too long and too painful a series to allow for such a recollection. 

____

Rick finishes watering. He sits in the grass by the garden, and watches as the plants seep up the water, their leaves starting to perk back up, and tries to figure out the mix of feelings twisting in his gut. Tries to make himself admit that not all of them are _negative_. 

____

The sun is warm out today, but not warm enough to justify the rush of heat to his face, or the tingling in his fingers. 

____

That particular feeling of warmth both dissolves some of his guilt, and awakens new guilt. Same as the undeniable ache of his own loneliness, which has returned full-force in the past week. 

____

It isn’t hard for him to figure the root cause of _that_ one out. 

____

\--

____

That night, he dreams of Andrea again. He sees her, in the dead of night, when he dreams he wakes beside her with two hands, and two legs which still do his bidding. 

____

When she speaks, she speaks with her own voice but Negan’s words. The words are quieter, gentler than they would be coming out of Negan’s mouth. She looks right into his eyes as she says them, head cocked. “Widows. So _empty_. But usually, not for long.”

____

He doesn’t remember falling back to sleep or waking again, after that, although he is sure he must. All he remembers is lying there, alone in his bed, thinking over and over again, _I have to go back_ , the wind blowing through the open windows, cold with the arriving chill of autumn. 

____

\-- 

____

When he pulls up to Negan’s little house the next day, the garden’s all withered up. Not dead, exactly, but droopy and neglected. Left unwatered for days and chock-full of opportunistic weeds. 

____

Everything he was afraid of when he first started checking up on Negan comes back in a rush of horror. He sees Negan’s shuffling, zombified form as clear as day, like it was right in front of him. Sees the man with his brains blown out in the kitchen. Sees him, slumped inside the entryway of the home in a pool of his own blood. Not with his wrists cut, but with his _throat_ cut, right where Rick did it before. Dead. Smiling. 

____

_No. No._

____

It was just a week. Just a fucking week. 

____

Rick just about runs into Negan’s house. The door is unlocked. The foyer is empty. 

____

He tears through the living room first, then the kitchen. He sees the bowl of tomatoes, rotting on the kitchen table, and bursts into the backyard to yell Negan’s name for any walker within a mile-radius to hear until his voice is hoarse, consequences be damned. 

____

He doesn’t even think to check upstairs until he’s already halfway given up, sure Negan’s dead or left for parts unknown. Then he sees it: last time he was in here, the upstairs still wasn’t properly cleared. All the doors were still closed. 

____

Now, they are open. 

____

By the time he’s white-knuckled his way up the stairs with his cane, and listened to the sound of the absolute silence of the second story for a moment, he feels like all the blood has drained from his body. Surely, Negan would have heard him calling for him, surely… 

____

One empty bedroom. Then another. Nothing. 

____

There’s one more door. For a minute, Rick has to just stand there, trying to brace himself and failing. Trying to breathe and failing. He fucked up, he _fucked up_. 

____

He opens it. 

____

The first thing that hits Rick is the smell. 

____

Then he sees Negan. 

____

He’s lying on his side on a twin-size bed, facing away from Rick, body curled in on himself. He’s still wearing his shoes, his jacket. 

____

He doesn’t move an inch, even after hearing Rick’s footsteps. 

____

For a moment, before he sees the subtle rise and fall of Negan’s chest, Rick’s heart stutters, and he thinks the reek of death that he smells in the room is coming from Negan, and that Negan’s dead. 

____

It doesn’t take him long to set eyes on the source of the stench. Walkers, or what was once walkers. Three of them. One’s still in the other twin, arms sprawling off of the bed as though it died reaching out to someone, head still oozing out mushy blood and brains where a knife slammed through its skull. Two others are sprawled out across the floor near it, half on top of each other, heads mashed brutally into the carpet. 

____

Two of them were children. They’re lying on top of each other, brains bashed in. 

____

And here’s Negan, lying in the room with them, like he doesn’t even give a crap. 

____

“Negan,” Rick says. 

____

Nothing. 

____

_“Negan.”_

____

“Fuck off, Rick.”

____

Rick’s in no mood to _fuck off_. He crosses the room. Negan rolls his head to look up at him, twisted in the bed, eyes still only half open. 

____

He looks horrible. Rick’s never seen Negan like this, and Rick’s seen Negan with his throat cut, bleeding out into dried-out summer grass. Rick’s _cut_ Negan’s throat, and watched him start to bleed out in real-time. That still doesn’t quite prepare him to see Negan looking right at him, and past him like he does. His skin is gray, and his eyes look fucking empty, like he isn’t even seeing Rick there, at all. 

____

_Widows_ , hisses Andrea, way meaner this time. _So. Empty._

____

All Rick can feel is guilt. 

____

“Jesus, Negan, didn’t you hear me?” he asks. Puts his hand on Negan’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

____

Negan shoves it off. “No, and no. Fuck off, and leave me here to rot, would you, Rick.” 

____

Rick’s in no mood. He tries again. Puts his hands on Negan’s shoulders and shoves Negan onto his back. “Don’t touch me,” the other man says, but his body is as limp as a ragdoll when Rick kneels beside him. His heart’s not in it when he bats Rick’s hands away. “Did you not hear me when I said _fuck off_?” he says.

____

Rick pretends he didn’t hear that as he looks Negan over once, then twice, obsessively. Looks at Negan’s hands and his arms and his neck. Puts his hands on Negan’s face, turning his head and checking for bites, for scratches, anything. 

____

There’s nothing there but lingering bruises. “Are you sick?” Rick asks, but he thinks he already knows the answer. 

____

Negan shakes his head, and Rick nods. His eyes run over Negan’s face, and he can see carved in its topology the record of days spent alone. Days Rick left him alone. It’s there in the exaggerated blackness around his eyes, in the smell of sweat and rot on him. Like he hasn’t showered or slept in a week. 

____

Just looking at Negan, he can almost feel the paralytic, crawling despair coming off the other man, like a subtle vibration in his bones. 

____

This is no physical injury.

____

Rick shudders involuntarily, thinking of the image of Negan, slit-throated and grinning, waiting for him dead in the hallway. 

____

And, fuck. He’s been there. He gets it. 

____

He remembers it, in the thoughtless horror of the taste of human blood and flesh in his mouth, and the terror in the eyes of his son. He remembers it after Lori, after the prison, after Judith. He remembers it, just weeks ago, after Andrea. He can almost feel it still. It was that same emptiness which drove him to Negan’s doorstep. 

____

He remembers it, meeting Negan, all those years ago, and in the days that followed. He finds, to his own surprise, that feels like it doesn’t matter anymore. Now, all he can feel is sympathy, and the strange warmth he felt, sitting alone in his garden in Alexandria. 

____

He presses his hand to Negan’s forehead in a final rush of paranoia, but Negan’s brow is cool and entirely human. He feels Negan relax under his touch, and that’s all the invitation he needs. 

____

“So. Supply run was that bad, huh?” he says, aching with the desire to make things better, and trying his best for humor. 

____

From the look Negan gives him, Rick might as well have punched him in the face. “You almost _died_ ,” Negan spits. 

____

So much for humor. Rick settles for manhandling Negan upright. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here. Smell is goddamn awful” 

____

\-- 

____

Negan sits, all-but-catatonic in the passenger seat of the truck as Rick drives them back to Alexandria. Sometimes, during the drive, Rick produces a bottle of water, and some pain pills, and presses them into Negan’s hands. The other man’s brow is furrowed with thought, but Negan’s too damn out-of-it to try to interpret the expression. 

____

Negan drains the water bottle. His mouth is dry as grass in August. 

____

Rick takes away the bottle of ibuprofen after Negan downs four dry. Negan resents that. His head is fucking killing him. 

____

He doesn’t say a word as Rick Grimes pulls him down the streets of Alexandria, and into his own home. None of the residents of Alexandria have the moxie to stop Rick in his tracks, even though Negan thinks they _should_. All they do is stare. 

____

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Rick says, and hauls him up the stairs. 

____

He doesn’t come up with a single quip while Rick motherfucking Grimes strips him down to his boxers and runs a bath for him, steaming hot. 

____

Rick has a huge, bougie-ass bathtub, and hot running water. It’s a miracle in the first degree, which repeated exposure does nothing to dim. He stares. He doesn’t move. 

____

“Get in,” Rick says. 

____

“Negan, for Christ’s sake,” Rick says. 

____

Negan get in, boxers and all. 

____

He just fucking sits there as the water rises around him. Doesn’t move. Couldn’t, if he wanted to. Rick sighs. He strips off his shirt and knees down on the cold tile beside Negan. Normally, this would be some absolute gold for the spank bank, but it’s all so pathetic that his dick doesn’t even fucking _twitch_. 

____

Rick’s trying to reach across the tub, like he’s going to give Negan a bath like that, kneeling beside him. It doesn’t work: Rick’s all elbows. His hands can’t quite reach everywhere they need to. His arms aren’t at the right angle, sitting on the ground. 

____

“Goddamnit,” Rick says. “I’m getting in, okay?” 

____

Rick clambers gracelessly in behind him, still half-clothed. The tub’s big enough the both fit easily. His legs slide awkwardly past Negan’s hips, but it’s easier like this. 

____

He washes Negan’s hair. “Okay,” Negan says, a few minutes too late. 

____

Rick teases the tangles out of Negan’s now overly-long hair with his fingers. He washes the grime off of Negan’s hands, off his shoulders, off his face. “I don’t mind doin’ this,” Rick says. “I’m sorry.” 

____

He’s so fucking gentle, and his hands linger in Negan’s hair longer than can possibly be necessary, just running through the wet locks. “I’m sorry,” he says again, barely above a whisper, hands settling against Negan’s bare shoulders. “I shouldn’t have… I, I had no idea,” and Negan has no clue what he’s talking about, or if he’s even talking to him at all. 

____

By the time Rick’s worked his way down to washing his legs, Negan’s partially regained the power of speech. “Okay, Rick. Okay. There’s some things a man’s gotta do for himself.” 

____

“I’ll make you some food,” Rick says while he’s toweling off. 

____

Rick leaves. Negan takes off the soaked boxers, and washes his junk. Sits in the grimy, still-warm water, and counts to one hundred slowly. Rick’s ministrations have brought him back to reality just enough that his body kinda feels like it belongs to him again.

____

Encouraging. He scrubs out the dirt and walker slime out from under his fingernails. Tries to get it together, even a little. _You name is Negan_ , he tells himself. _Your wife is Lucille. Your wife is dead. You’re in Alexandria, Virginia. The whole world’s gone tits-up. Your name is Negan…_

____

The mantra used to be longer. Used to say, _You are the leader of the Saviors. Seventy-five people. Don’t fuck it up_. Sometimes the number was less. Sometimes it was more. Negan always knew the number. Sometimes, that came back to him before his own name. 

____

Thinking about that, right now? Super, _super_ not helping. 

____

Everything’s weird as _shit_ right now, though, which also isn’t exactly helping him bring himself back to reality. He’s pretty sure -- no, completely sure Rick Grimes was just in this bath with him, maybe five minutes ago. If that ain’t some otherworldly, fantasyland shit, Negan doesn’t know what is. 

____

He gets out of the bath, and towels off. He finds he doesn’t even really have the presence of mind or the fucks to give to feel particularly sheepish about the whole thing, although he’s sure he’ll be downright writhing with the humiliation of it all in a few hours. Right now, he’s still shivering with the memory of Rick’s hands, all over him. 

____

Rick’s left clean clothes out for him, on the bed. All slightly too small, they leave him looking overgrown and ridiculous, the cotton of Rick’s old tee shirt stretching tight across his shoulders, the bottoms of his pants cutting off at Negan’s ankle. 

____

He goes downstairs. 

____

Rick’s making sandwiches, heating up beans on the stove. 

____

Negan doesn’t trust any of it. He leads with, “You should have left me to die.”

____

Mildly: “Is that what you were doing?” 

____

“On the run. In the damn house. Either, Rick, fuck you. I coulda gotten you killed. I deserve it, _hell_ , I want it. ” 

____

Rick shakes his head. Spreads mayo on the bread. “I wasn’t gonna do that. I don’t want that,” he says softly, back still turned. “I don’t want you to die.” 

____

That shuts him right up. He has to swallow, hard. 

____

“Your garden _will_ die, though, if you keep treating it like that,” Rick continues, almost conversationally, like Negan’s not standing there, confused and a bad five seconds away from tears. “An’ I hope you like Kingdom ham, because that’s just about the only sandwich meat to be had. Little salty, I think, but not awful. Sit down.” 

____

Negan does. 

____

“We can go back this evening for your stuff,” Rick continues, setting a cup in front of Negan, then a sandwich.

____

Baked beans. A ham sandwich on homemade bread. Rick squeezes Negan’s shoulder. “We can water, and weed the garden, too, if you’re up to it. You’re not stayin’ there, though, not with you like this. I’ve got plenty of room here. Don’t look at me like that. _Eat_.” 

____

Fucking pork and beans. Fresh fucking bread. He’s not gonna cry into this beautiful shit. He concentrates on how good it all tastes. 

____

When Negan’s finished, Rick comes over behind him, like he’s coming to take his plate, but instead, he’s putting his hand on Negan’s arm, and pressing his forehead into Negan’s shoulder. “You scared the hell outta me,” he breathes.“You scare the goddamn hell outta me, all the damn time.”

____

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what have i been working on for the past few days, you ask? oh, nothing, just the least-sexy, and most depressing bath-sharing scene even written, which absolutely no-one asked for 
> 
> god help my dumb ass... i wrote the gist chapter once, like generally less nice and meaner/more ambiguous  
> but i made myself too sad and had to re-write it whoops


	4. Stray Dogs

They don’t make it back to Negan’s house, that day. “I’m just… so fucking tired,” Negan confesses. “Just get me a blanket, and I'll sleep on the couch. There ain’t shit in that house that won’t wait until tomorrow.” 

Rick relents. Lets Negan sleep curled up on the sofa, even though every greedy fiber in his being wants to make Negan come upstairs with him, and lie down next to him on the other side of his bed. He wants to watch him fall asleep, wants to listen to him breathe until the morning comes. 

He knows he ain’t gonna be able to sleep anyway, alone in his huge, empty bed. 

It’s a good thing, too. 

It means he’s awake at 5am, just before the dawn, sitting on the front porch while Negan sleeps inside. 

It means he’s there to greet Maggie when she comes flying up to his house, raging like a damn tropical storm. 

“He’s _here_ , Rick?,” she’s saying before she’s even up the front steps. “He’s in your house?” 

God dammit. 

Michonne is there, too, standing back at a distance while Maggie hurtles forward toward him, flush with anger. She’s clearly come from the Hilltop in a rush: everything she’s wearing is rumpled, her hair still unbrushed, sweat on her brow which there’s no heat in the air to explain. 

How is it even possible word travels that fast? 

For a second, Rick’s unfortunate first impulse is to lie, to try to tell them Negan left already. He figured that would work _great_ , considering that he’s pretty sure Negan’s sleeping form is visible through one of the gauze-curtained windows, buried under a patchwork of blankets. He was actually _snoring_ when Rick went past him to slip outside. 

“He is. If it helps any, he’s not leaving here, and he’s not going anywhere without me” Rick says after a fraught moment. “He’ll just be here, and where he’s been living before. Nothin’ to be done about that part. Believe it or not, there’s a garden there's he’s been growing which’ll need to get watered.”

Maggie positively seethes at that, raking her hands through her hair in frustration. “Jesus, Rick. Haven’t I done enough already? I think I have. I think I’ve done _plenty_ of acts of kindness for Negan. I let him go. Hell, I let him go _twice_.” 

“Maggie --” 

“No, Rick. He needs to move on, but he ain’t doing nothing of the sort. Now, I know you two have been spending a lot of time together lately. I heard. I thought it was okay. I thought it would be better if someone kept an eye on him. But I think you need someone to give you a little perspective here. Let me remind you: you can’t _trust him_. You can’t ever trust him.” 

Rick sighs. He scrubs a hand through his beard. 

For a second, he lets himself genuinely consider Maggie’s words. Lets himself see all the blood that’s been shed between the two of them over the years. It turned whole weeks, whole months of his recollection hazy and red around the edges. It hurts to think about, in a way that the past few years have failed completely to dull. _Can_ he trust Negan? 

Then he thinks of Negan, glassy-eyed in the passenger seat of his truck. Thinks of the way Negan’s shoulders slumped under his hands as he scrubbed him clean, the two of them crammed together in Rick’s bath. Thinks of tomatoes and marigolds and freshly-planted pumpkins, and a little house, and cut sunflowers by a makeshift cross. Thinks of Negan saving his life, once, then twice.

He feels a sudden rush of guilt. _She’s wrong_ , he thinks suddenly, adamantly. _She don’t know him_. 

A deep breath. “I swear to you, he’s no threat to anyone in this community. Hell, right now? He’s more of a threat to himself than anyone else. You know that, Maggie. You’ve got to trust me on this.” 

 

Michonne has come up on the porch to stand across from them. She’s staring at Rick, way too intently for his liking. 

“Michonne --” 

“Have you forgotten who he _is_ , Rick?” 

“No. Of course not. How could I ever?” He knows that Michonne’s anger is every bit justified. Still, he has to pause for a moment, and fight back a rush of frustration. Subconsciously, his fingers move to grip his cane a little tighter. He smiles, ruefully. “I know who he is. I know every time I get up to walk. I do dream, sometimes, you know? I dream, and in my dreams, both my legs work. Maybe I forget for a minute, then.” 

Maggie’s face stays unreadable, but he sees Michonne soften, minutely.

“Is that why he’s here?” Maggie asks him after a moment, surveying his face in the half-darkness. “On account of him, being a threat to himself?”

Rick grimaces. “Yeah. I went over there, yesterday. Thought for sure he was dead. Found him holed up with a couple of dead walkers. The walkers, they were _children_ , Maggie, and he’s just lying there like he’s waitin’ to be one of them.” 

It makes his skin crawl, talking about Negan like this to them. Even if he glosses over the worst of it, he knows Negan would just about crawl out of his skin if he knew Rick told Maggie any of this. But he figures he doesn't really have much of a choice.

It's worth it, too. This time, behind Maggie’s scowl, he can see something else. _Pity_. Even pity’s something. 

“You really think...?” Maggie says. 

“I…” Rick tries to think of how he can convey to the two of them the feeling of dread he’s felt, since Maggie told him about Negan’s outburst to her, a gun to his head. “I do. I worry, every time I go there. I can’t lose another, not now. And especially not like that. Now, he doesn’t have to leave these walls, and Lord knows I’ll keep an eye on him, but he’s stayin’ here. At least for a few days.” 

For a minute, everyone is quiet. Rick thinks, heart sinking, that Maggie’s not gonna take no for an answer. 

Then Maggie shakes her head. “I’m not gonna lie to you, I don’t like it one damn bit. Take… take a few days. Hell, take a week. But if I see his face at the Hilltop, I’m not gonna tell you I won’t take him out, because I _will_. I'll tell my people to shoot on sight.” 

Rick swallows. He nods. 

“I don't expect you to like it,” he says. “But I think… I think he has to live with it. And I think he could prove himself useful. Make things better. I’m not lettin’ him die, not after everything." He swallows. "I _can’t_ watch another person die. I can't.” 

Rick doesn’t realize that his eyes are burning up until Maggie steps forward, and puts an arm on his. “Oh, Rick,” she says. “I know you can’t.” 

\-- 

Michonne stops him, once Maggie’s out of earshot, grabbing him by the arm. “Tell me him _being a threat to himself_ is the only reason he’s here. Look me in the eye and tell me. There's something else, too.” 

Rick’s incapable of lying to her, after all the years of their friendship. Wouldn’t lie to her, even if he could. “That’s… that’s part of it.” 

“And the other part?” 

Rick smiles a little, ruefully. “The other part, I’m not sure.” 

If Michonne can glean anything from his expression (which he imagines she absolutely can), she spares him elaborating on it. Her expression twists a little, but all she says is: “I trust you, Rick. If you say he’s okay, well… I’m not gonna like it, but I’ll take you at your word. I thought Maggie was coming to kill you, though.” 

He laughs a little, low and choked. 

\-- 

Negan sleeps better lying curled up on Rick’s sofa than he has in weeks. Doesn’t dream a damn thing, and wakes hours after noon to an empty house, bathed in sun with an absolute bear of a crick in his neck. 

He gets up and shuffles around the house. No Rick to be found. 

_Absolutely unbelievable._

He goes back to the couch, thinking that if the good citizens of Alexandria ever caught wind of the fact that big, bad Negan is allowed to nap on Rick’s couch unsupervised, they’d probably all collectively shit themselves. 

_Right_. Negan feels incredibly fucking threatening, curled up on Rick’s couch, wearing clothes that are all at least a size too small, buried under a collection of mismatched blankets, and thinking about exactly how fucking pathetic he was yesterday while he burns up with embarrassment. 

It ain’t like Rick hasn’t already seen Negan in compromising states. Negan did spend two years living in a cell with Rick as almost his only company. Rick’s busted in on him with his dick out more times than he cares to count. Rick’s seen him cry, plenty. 

It’s quiet in the house. Almost worryingly quiet. Negan gets up, after a few minutes. Pokes around Rick’s kitchen looking for something to eat. 

Another reason to believe Alexandria’s nothing but God’s last, dumb miracle: inside the well-stocked pantry, there’s instant coffee and a whole package of Honey Buns. 

_Un-fuckin’-be-lievable._

He eats two. 

Still no Rick. 

He makes some coffee. 

By the time Rick does comes back in, Negan’s been sitting at the table with his hands wrapped around a cup of instant coffee for the past fifteen minutes, seeping in worry. 

He can tell in an instant something’s happened. It’s written all over Rick’s worry-pinched face, even though he’s obviously just come from the garden. The knees of his jeans are stained green from the grass, and he smells like dirt and clean sweat. 

He looks at Negan, who is standing up in the kitchen and clutching a now-cold coffee, and his face goes all funny and sad. Like he’s looking at a stray dog he can’t afford to keep. 

_Fuck._

\-- 

Rick knew this conversation wasn’t gonna go good. 

He doesn’t make it much past telling Negan that Maggie was here, and telling him “this might have to be temporary” before Negan completely loses it. 

“You’re gonna, what? Keep me here for a few days, then this is all over?” 

Rick thinks for a second that he sees a flash of hurt on Negan’s face, but it’s gone in a second as Negan’s whole form shifts into something hard. 

“I know, I fucking know.” Rick scrubs his hand over his face. “I shouldn’t have left you alone like that, and I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t make it all better. I know I got us into this situation in the first place.” 

Negan stiffens. 

Rick remembers, then, as he watches Negan’s features contort, his incredible capacity for cruelty. The memory comes to him as though from another life, as though it’s rising from a long-past dream. Negan stand straighter with it, with his white teeth bared and his whole body tense as though he’s pressed up against a knife’s edge. 

“You think… you think _that_ was it? You really think I wanted to die just because I got lonely?” he says, laughing through his words. “Because you weren’t around anymore to fucking braid my hair and clean up my boo-boos? Pretty little _Saint Rick_ , comin’ around to save my hell-bound soul?”

He spits out the last four words viciously. His laughter sounds horrible. 

Rick tries to speak, to cut him off before he can go any further: “Negan --”

Negan just keeps going. Rick sees it happening, sees where this is going, but is powerless to intervene. He sees the moment Negan takes the sharp edge of his own cruelty and twists it on himself with ease. 

“God, you must be dumber than I gave you credit for. Or softer than I ever gave you credit for. Thinking that’s it. That it’s all so _goddamn fixable_.” 

Negan pauses just long enough to lock eyes with Rick, burning with the intensity of his conviction. Even as he holds Rick’s gaze, eyes bright as hellfire, he couldn’t be talking to Rick any less if he tried. 

“See, all that time, in that house, alone? I thought a lot. Thought a whole hell of a lot clearer than I ever did in that cell. I know who I am. I know what I’ve done. I do deserve to die. I made the world a worse place, just by bein’ in it, for a long-ass time.” 

Negan sounds just like he did, years ago: like he’s reading off lines, mechanically hitting the intonation of each word, one after the other. Cruel, but paint-by-the-numbers cruel. 

“Maggie’s right,” he goes on, voice dropping precipitously, but losing none of its vitriol. “I’d do it myself, too, if I was even a little less of a chickenshit. Turns out, I ain’t got no guts when it counts. Ain’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?” 

All the nastiness in the world wouldn’t fool Rick, not now. 

Rick feels physically ill. 

Rick wants to take every sharp object in the house, and lock them all up. 

He wants to cross the room, to put his hands on Negan, to silence him, somehow. To make everything right. But the words… they’re familiar. 

The idea that Negan deserves to die? He’s heard this argument before. From Carl. From Michonne. From Maggie, of course, more times than he can count. Worse, it was arguably true, at one time. Once, nothing but ill-placed mercy kept Rick from executing Negan publically. He’d considered it. He’d considered it very seriously. 

Now, the thought makes him sick. 

Rick wants to tell Negan what he’s saying about himself isn’t true, not a word of it. But he also knows he can’t hold anything back from Negan, not when he’s like this. There’s no point in sugarcoating. Any attempt at gentleness will slide right back off Negan like oil from water. 

There’s no way out of this but the truth, even if it will hurt, temporarily. 

“Maybe…” Rick starts cautiously. “Maybe there was a time when... all _that_? All that was true. That time’s past. That time’s been past for a long time now.” 

“So, what? I _do stuff_ , stuff like I did, and then it all just… goes away? Like nothing ever fucking happened?” Negan snarls back. “Just do a little gardening, and wham, bam, you’re a good person. You grew a damn carrot, _you_ can’t have ever killed all those people, not _you_. You never bashed a guys head into a fucking pulp while his wife watched! You never killed a sixteen-year-old kid!” 

He sounds… almost hysterical. 

Rick walks closer to Negan, hands up like Negan’s armed and dangerous, like Negan isn't standing in his kitchen, barefoot, in nothing but an old tee-shirt and sweats. “No. But it helps. It makes things better. There’s a balance, and you’ve... you’ve gotta live long enough to try and set it even.” 

A second passes. Rick thinks, maybe, Negan didn’t hear him, didn’t understand what he was saying. He tries again: “I mean that, Negan. You’ve gotta cut that crap out, man. You’ve got shit to live for. You’ve got shit to do.” 

A long silence. Negan looks at the floor, at his bare feet. 

Rick said the words as gently as he could, but when Negan’s gaze finally comes up to meet his, his features crumple like Rick dealt him a blow. 

“Negan,” Rick says softly. 

A second later, the snarl falls from his face, and he’s leaning back against the countertop like he doesn’t trust his own legs to hold him up, his whole body going from steel-hard to rubber, shoulders sagging. 

Rick’s across the kitchen in an instant, his hands reaching out to Negan, going to cup his face, to grasp his shoulders, to physically hold him upright. 

Negan shoves him away. 

Negan grabs his hands and pulls him back an instant later. 

“Fuck, Rick,” Negan says heavily, sagging against Rick’s shoulder. “I can’t, you understand? I fucking can’t. I don’t got it in me.” 

“It’s okay,” Rick’s saying. “I swear it’s okay. I swear you can. I’ll help you. Let me help you.” 

_“Fuck_ ,” Negan says, and Rick’s pretty sure from the sound of his voice he’s crying. He puts a hand on Negan’s back, another against the back of his head, and pulls him close until their bodies are flush together, and he can feel every shake of Negan’s shoulders in his own bones as he holds him still.

He runs his fingers through Negan’s hair. “That’s what I told Maggie, you know? Yeah. I did. I told her you’ll make it better. Hell, I think she believed me. I’ll drive her out and show her that garden you grew, if I gotta. I’ll promise her all the squash in the world.” 

When Negan still stays still, Rick takes his face in his hands, gently, and pulls it up so he can see the other man. Wipes Negan’s tears away with his thumbs. Watches as Negan takes a deep breath, and then another. 

Then, from outside: a rumble of thunder. A few moments later, there’s the sound of rain, starting to come down hard on the roof. 

“Well, guess we don’t have to go back for the garden,” Rick says, and Negan laughs, soft and now only half-twindged with hysteria. 

\--

Negan doesn’t know how to handle himself in Rick’s home. 

Once, years ago, he raged through the place like a hurricane, taking anything and everything he wanted. The house never stopped being a miracle, though, and now Negan feels so out-of-place and shaky between its walls that it’s absurd. He feels like he has no skin, like every protective layer that was between him and the outside world has been stripped away in the past twenty-four hours, and now his every nerve ending is left exposed to the open air. 

Rick keeps touching him, which is both helping, and not-helping. He’s gentle and incredibly deliberate in this, as though he has to remind himself every few minutes that Negan isn’t some ghost inhabiting his home.

They go out to find some clothes which will fit Negan better, and Rick puts his hand on Negan’s shoulder as they’re leaving the house, and squeezes, gently. When the rain stops, Rick goes out, and Negan naps on the living room sofa. When he wakes up in the evening, it’s to Rick’s hand on his arm, telling him he’s made dinner for them. After they’ve eaten, he makes them tea in the kitchen, and when he gives Negan his cup, he presses it right into Negan’s hand and lets his own hands sit there, on top of Negan’s own, for a long moment. 

Then, they’re sitting across from each other at the kitchen table in silence. Negan has decided he won’t allow himself to look at Rick’s face, because he knows he’ll stare. He’s looking at Rick’s hands instead, folded in front of him. 

The tea’s gone cold, but Rick’s barely touched his. That vacant look is in his eyes again. It’s dark outside, now. 

It hangs between them, unsaid and unspeakably heavy. A world of Rick’s gentle touches can’t erase the knowledge of whose place he’s taking at the table. 

“Do you want to see her?” Rick asks finally. 

“Yeah. Fuck. Yeah, I do.” 

\-- 

_Andrea Grimes_ , says the grave. 

The ground isn’t entirely bare anymore. Instead, little weedy flowers are growing up where the ground was disturbed. Purple flowers peeking out from hood-like leaves, and tall, lanky-stemmed white blooms. Flowers which are little more than minuscule yellow dots clinging to sprawling stems, and a few tiny grasses, burst out and sagging with the weight of fresh inflorescence. 

In another world, one which didn’t go to shit, Negan might know the names of all of them: dead-nettles and daisy fleabanes, hop-clover and fescue grass laid heavy with seed. 

Rick isn’t even trying to hide the fact that he’s crying from Negan. He’s looking at Negan unabashed with his eyes red and his face wet. “First Lori,” he says. “Then her. I thought it’d get easier. Is that awful?” 

Negan’s lived a whole life, since Lucille. He’s died once, with blood gushing out of his throat, and been born into a new one, after that. It never got easier. 

“No. I’m sorry,” he says lamely. “I wish I could say it ever fuckin’ does.” 

He tries something, then. Can’t help himself. Can’t just stand there and watch. He reaches out and cups Rick’s face in one hand, steady, this time. 

This time, Rick isn’t still. His head leans against Negan’s palm, instantaneously. His whole body sags against Negan’s shoulders. 

They stand like that, for a few minutes. 

“I’m gonna need you… I’m gonna need you to be careful all the rest of your life, you understand me?” Rick says. 

That? That is such a gobsmacking, flabbergasting thing for Rick to say that all Negan comes up with to say back is, “Guy like me? Really?” 

He feels Rick grimace against his palm as much as he sees it. 

“Okay. Okay. Jesus, Rick. Anything you want.”

Rick closes his eyes. Smiles, a little. 

Negan’s grateful: his eyes are burning with the effort of holding back tears. 

While Rick’s not looking, he lets himself cry a bit, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter uhhh.... really lives up to the "grown men crying" tag 
> 
> I am... gonna post at least one more chapter after this one, possibly two depending on how things hash out 
> 
> I like, already know how I want it to end and have most of it written, but am fussing b/c I am getting stupidly attached to this story


	5. The Same Cloth

That night, Negan showers in Rick’s bathroom. He’s kind of an ass about it, this time: he steals his toothpaste and sniffs his shampoo (which smells like very, very fake strawberry). Peeks in the medicine cabinet. Works up a little nerve, and then stares at himself in the mirror for what must be a full ten minutes. 

He needs to shave something fierce, and despite doing little but sleep for the past day, he still looks painfully exhausted. His under-eyes smattered with uncharacteristic darkness, and he despite the flush left on his skin from the shower, there's still a sickly gray cast to his skin. 

He looks like the town drunk, or the tail end of a bender, or like someone died. He looks like absolute shit. 

_Jesus fucking Christ_ , he thinks, rubbing at his eyes. _Small wonder Rick’s worried._

Rick, who was sitting outside when he went to shower, and is probably getting worried at this point. 

In another world, Rick wouldn’t have to worry what Negan might be doing when he's left alone for a few minutes. In another world, one that’s now passed by at least a couple years, he’d… _maybe_ cover up his dick, and then bust out of the bathroom mostly-naked so he could laugh at Rick while he blushed and averted his eyes in obvious horror. _What’s wrong, Ricky?_ he’d say. _No shame in likin' what you see. You _do_ like what you see, don't you, huh? C’mon, we’re all adults here, what’s a little dick between friends? _

__

Now, he changes quickly before leaving the bathroom. Sweats, and a huge camo tee. Options were… limited, in the abandoned closets of Alexandria. He gives himself a parting scowl and wanders back out. 

__

Rick’s sitting on the side of his unmade bed, staring at his hands, brow furrowed. He looks up at Negan, and then looks away again. 

__

Negan isn’t quite sure what that means. Does it mean he’s supposed to shuffle off to sleep on the sofa, and leave Rick to brood himself fresh forehead wrinkles in peace? 

__

Probably. But he can’t help himself. “Penny for your thoughts?” he says. 

__

He’s fully expecting Rick to either shrug him off, or lay some heavy shit on him which he probably won’t be able to handle without putting his foot in his mouth. Instead, Rick says, “I think you should sleep here tonight.” 

__

Negan’s brain doesn’t quite compute for a second. “Rick, you don’t have to give me your bed -- hell, man, I can keep sleeping on the couch, shit is fucking _blissful_ , I swear to God. I can sleep on the floor if I need to, God knows I’m used to it at this point.” 

__

“It’s not -- it’s not like that,” Rick says. He takes a breath, suddenly sounding deeply unsure and unsteady. Like suddenly, even after spending the last two days prodding Negan’s useless ass to do incredibly basic things like eating and showering, he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. “Just… sleep with me? Sleep next to me.” 

__

Negan stares dumbly. He’s losing count of the number of times Rick has left him completely speechless in the past few days. 

__

“Not if… not if you don’t want to,” Rick says quickly, but his face flashes with disappointment before he can hide it completely. “I’m not asking you for sex, I thought that was pretty clear at this point. It’s just -- it’s just so empty here now. And I don’t… I don’t sleep, not like this.” 

__

_Oh._

__

He stands there for a few uncomfortably long moments, staring at the bed like he’s a fucking teenager who ain’t ever done it before trying to get the nerve up for a fuck. Then he sits down at the foot of the bed, stumbling gracelessly over his words. “I -- uh, _okay_. Sure. Fuck it. I’m never gonna turn down a real bed. What’s a little -- uh, nevermind.” 

__

Rick chuckles. “Calm down. I don’t bite. Not like you, uh -- you don’t gotta do anything you don’t want to.” 

__

Oh, it’s worse than that. 

__

Negan has to _not_ do a whole lot of things he _really, really_ wants to do. 

__

In another world, where none of the bad shit which happened in this one ever happened, Negan would roll onto his back, and bat his eyelashes at Rick. He’d say, _sweetheart, maybe I want you to bite_ , and _c’mon, Ricky, you look like the kinda guy who could give me what I want_ , and then… then, he’d finally get acquainted with Rick’s stupidly pink mouth the way he’s always wanted to get acquainted with it. 

__

And he -- well, he better not think about that too hard, right now. He crawls into the bed. 

__

Rick flicks out the light. 

__

Still unsure if he’s supposed to be leaving room for Jesus in this particular situation, Negan leaves as much room between him and Rick as possible. 

__

Rick huffs. “You’re not gonna make this easy, are you?” 

__

Then, again, more softly. “Please. _Come here_.” 

__

_Fuck it._

__

He rolls over and fumbles in the dark for Rick. Finds, in that darkness, Rick’s hands, which grasp at him and pull him closer with something which seems equal to the desperation he feels. They fumble at each other gracelessly for a few moments until they manage to settle down with Negan’s head on Rick’s shoulder, his arm thrown across Rick’s chest, and Rick’s hand lying across his own. 

__

Rick runs his hand slowly up and down Negan's arm, thoughtless and gentle. Negan wants _more_. That's always been his fatal flaw. He wants to grasp and clutch at Rick like they’re the only two sorry shits left in this world. 

__

Instead, he lets them lie there, just like that, and remains wide awake until he hears Rick’s breathing even out, and feels as the other man’s body relaxes minutely into his. 

__

Eyes closed, he listens to the sound of Rick breathing for what seems like an eternity until he finally manages to fall asleep. 

__

\-- 

__

When Rick’s eyes come open, some untold number of hours before dawn, it’s not Negan that’s lying beside him. 

__

“I never wanted you to be alone,” Andrea says, smiling, propped up on one arm beside him. “You know that. I can’t say he was my first choice, but, hey, I get it. Options are limited these days. You think I don’t see the way you look at him?” 

__

And she’s smiling, she’s smiling, she’s downright incandescent. Rick’s struggling to breathe, trying to reach out to her, but finding his limbs heavy with sleep, all-but-immovable. 

__

She reaches out to him, instead, tucking a stray curl back in its place, and touching him with hands that never quite meet their mark and never quite feel real on his skin. “Oh, Rick,” she says softly. “Why deny yourself anything you want, especially now? Seize it with both hands, baby, and pray to God that it lasts. I know you. You need somebody.” 

__

He finds his voice. “It’s been weeks, Andrea. Weeks.” 

__

“ _Months_. Rick, sweetheart -- ” 

__

“It’s not just anyone. He’s not just… somebody.” 

__

“Please. Anybody can love anyone if they want to. If they make each other happy, that’s everything that matters. Come on, Rick. You’re smarter than that. I loved Dale before I loved you. You think God cut Dale and I from the same cloth? No way, honey.” 

__

His voice is faltering. “I miss you _so much, Andrea_. I miss you every single day.” 

__

Her fingers are cupping his cheek. They feel so real. “That? That’s not gonna change anytime soon, baby.” 

__

When Rick wakes up that morning, he wakes up with his face pressed into Negan’s back. He wakes up, and it doesn’t feel too bad. 

__

\--

__

They go back to Negan’s house, the next day. 

__

By the time the sun is getting high, Rick is mostly finished reviving their garden, cutting back the last of the frostbitten tissue from the tomatoes, and soaking the half-withered flowers in water. 

__

While this happens, Negan mostly sits on his ass, occasionally helping a little here and there. He tries to think of things to say. Anything, to convey his complete and utter confusion about _what the hell is currently going on_ but none of them quite sound right.

__

When Rick’s finally done, the sun is turning everything golden, shining through the trees and into Rick’s baby blues with a fantastic intensity. Negan’s getting hot, starting to sweat under his borrowed flannel. 

__

Rick sits down beside him in the grass, and looks him right in the eyes. 

__

There’s no preamble: “I can’t love you like you want. Not now. Not so soon after Andrea.” 

__

Negan’s heart drops. His throat feels like it's closing up. “Rick,” he croaks, “Shut up, shut up, I can’t -- ” 

__

“Hush. Listen, for once in your life.” 

__

Rick doesn’t say anything, though, not for a minute. Instead, he’s taking Negan’s hand in his own, his fingers cupping Negan’s palm and his thumb running across the freshly-formed pink scar where Negan cut his knuckles open gardening, weeks ago. 

__

Negan can’t _breathe_ it feels so goddamn intimate.

__

“I can love you like this,” Rick says softly, eyes flicking to the garden they grew together, to the fruits ripening on the vine. To Negan himself, dressed half in Rick’s old clothes. “I can love you like _this_ ,” he says again. “Nothing else. Not yet. Do you understand?” 

__

Rick sounds so calm. So sure of himself. 

__

Negan thinks of all those years he spent as Rick’s prisoner. He thinks of Rick, bringing him paperback books to read from his own home, with little, cramped notes in the margin. These, Negan quickly discovered, were written in Rick’s own hand. 

__

He thinks of the fleece blankets and wool socks Rick brought him when the nights got cold in the winter, freshly-washed and still smelling of soap and herbs. 

__

He thinks of the spring when he got the flu something fierce, and Rick sat down there with him for two nights together, listening to him cough his lungs out and waiting for his fever to break. 

__

He thinks of how good it felt, waking up this morning, one arm slung over Rick. Their skin was sticking together, just a little, and his was face pressed into Rick’s hairline so that all he could smell was that strawberry shampoo. He thinks of Rick, at his doorstep weeks ago, clutching two loaves of bread in his arms and saying _I know it ain’t much_. 

__

He knows exactly what Rick means, and Rick’s wrong. It’s everything he wants. It’s more than he could ever deserve. 

__

He turns his face up to the sky, now fuzzy with the tears in his eyes. He squeezes Rick’s hand. “Anything,” he says. “Anything you want. You just gotta say it and it’s yours, I…” 

__

God, he can’t help himself. “Fuck. You gotta know by now. I _love_ you. I l fucking love you, Rick.” 

__

Rick smiles, then, big and slow. He laughs a little, and it's pure joy, it’s the best sound Negan’s ever heard in his life. 

__

“Yeah, and you know what?” Rick says. “I think the soil around here must be good. Looks better than the gardens in Alexandria. I reckon, we put up a fence out here, clear out a few more of the houses…” 

__

Negan blinks at Rick stupidly. “What -- what are you saying?” 

__

“I’m sayin’, you and I grow a damn good garden. Could do that here. I don't need to be at Alexandria anymore, not every day.” 

__

Negan can see it all, the instant Rick says it, like a fucking vision. All the goddamn tomatoes and squash and peas in the world. More cut flowers for Rick than Rick has jars to put them it. 

__

“Come home with me, dumbass” Rick says, getting up and pulling Negan with him so that they're both stumbling as they get to their feet. “I love you, too.” 

__

The sun beats down on them, warm and golden, and surely, it’s shining only for them.

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) !! 
> 
> thank god it's DONE and WRITTEN
> 
> i wrote a really really smutty coda/next chapter after this one in which Negan finally gets the really explicitly sexual lovin' he honestly really wants which i'll... probably publish separately, in a bit, b/c it's *wildly* more explicit than the rest of this fic (i mean.... assuming i get up the guts to put it out there to the wider internet tbh)
> 
> so much love to all you guys for reading and commenting! it means so so much <3


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